Something
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: AU of The Ride-In and Sleight Out Of Hand. Danny makes good on a promise so Lindsay doesn't have to say goodbye. Dantana.
1. Something

**_You guys! I promised myself I'd actually start on my university application essays tonight, but the outpouring of love you've dumped on me for all the Dantana I've been spewing is making those little devils cavort about in my head. I'm such a newb at this ship, and your support means more than Danny playing handball in a wife-beater to me. You are all my sisters from other misters and the hos I'd choose over my bros any day.  
This one's for you.  
Oh, and the lyrics are from the song 'Legally Blonde' from the musical 'Legally Blonde'. Emmett sings them to Elle, and I thought they were apt.  
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**Something**

_What about love?_

And sex without meaning is just friction.

_I never mentioned love_

And a heart without feeling is just muscle.

_The timing's bad, I know_

And eyes that aren't seeing are always empty.

_But perhaps if I'd made it more clear_

And words that aren't said don't really exist.

_That you belong right here_

An unspoken, silent promise exists between two people, tied by a fragile silken thread.

_You wouldn't have to go_

So fragile that even a breath can shake it; even a tremor can break it, and send it tumbling to earth.

_**~#~**_

"Lindsay?"

She starts a little, fingers closing around the card she's just propped up on his desk. Hawkes, observant as ever, slips from the room with a slight smile and a freshly printed sheet of paper.

"Oh, Danny. You startled me."

He gestures toward the envelope in her hand. "That for me?"

She lowers her eyes. "It is. I've never...never been good at saying goodbye to people." Because she never got a chance to say goodbye to the people who deserved it most, the people who deserved to have never needed her to say it.

"Goodbye?" He comes into the room proper, places his warm, rough fingers on her arm and looks into her face. "Why goodbye, Montana? Where are you going?"

She shifts awkwardly, trying to avoid the piercing blue gaze that is now so close to hers. "Montana, Danny." She looks up at him, and suddenly feels a wave of misplaced homesickness wash over her like crippling nausea. This is home, she thinks: _his_ Montana, not hers. "I have to testify in a case back there."

"As a CSI?"

"As a witness."

Realisation sparks behind his eyes; a blue hot inferno. "And that's the reason you've been holding out on me." His grip tightens on her arm, but there's still that reserve: he's still treating her as if she's more delicate and fragile than the tiniest particle of trace.

"Yes."

"Fine." He lets go of her arm, and she feels the loss of contact more than she can say. "When do you leave?"

"Now, really."

"Okay." He starts to move away from her, but she grips the sleeve of his lab coat and tugs him back, consternation written all over her penitent face.

"Where are you going?"

"To call the airlines," he says firmly. "You go, I go."

"Danny, you can't –"

"I said if there was anything you needed, I'd be here. You need something, so I'm here." He begins sweeping up badge, papers, pens, wallet, spare change, keys, ignoring the fact that she's still hanging onto his sleeve like a loving little limpet and still trying to protest the idea in its entirety. "You need to me to stay outside the courtroom and not hear a word? Fine. You need to yell at me and hit me some? Fine. You need to not talk to me and not look at me for the next year and a half? Fine. But whatever you do and whatever you say and whoever you need me to be –" He pauses and shakes his head, then continues. "I'm coming with you."

"I wasn't going to yell at you," she replies quietly, and there is a jolt of electricity as her pinkie finger slips up alongside his wrist and brushes – just once and just gently – across his pulse.

"Good."

"Danny." There's a whole lot of something in that one little word.

"What?" He doesn't even look up from his capsule packing until a small hand slides beneath his jaw and turns his face to the side, where brown eyes are shining like Chinese lanterns in the dark.

And then Lindsay Monroe leans forward, closes her eyes, and kisses Danny Messer. Their lips part together, and their hands move together, and her fingers are still beneath his chin as if to hold him in place. She sighs once, so sweetly, and he says her name in a hoarse voice that sounds nothing like his own.

"I want you to see home," she says when they finally break apart. "I want you to meet my parents. I want to tell you...I want to tell you everything."

He doesn't focus on the sadness in her eyes, only their shared look of relief and release. "Does your dad have a gun?"

"More than one."

"Oh, God." His hands slip inexorably through her hair, and she laughs and tilts her head back like a cat being petted. "Do you promise to sit in front of me the whole time we're there? Can I take my vest?" His motions suddenly freeze. "How many brothers did you say you have?"

"Three."

"Can I take Flack?"


	2. Amen

**_You guys rock my world - seriously. Therefore, by popular demand, here is a bolt-on for Something. It may have brothers and sisters following it, I don't know yet. Let's wait to see where the muse drags me, kicking and screaming. This one is a little sadder, but that's because Lindsay's sad so Danny's sad so all us crazy fanladies are sad...which makes Lindsay and Danny REALLY sad.  
Enjoy._**

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**Amen**

"Please..." Her fingers tremble on his arm, and her eyes are dark and fawn-like.

Hunted.

Haunted.

"I'll be here," he promises, and he gives her a swift kiss on the cheek before sending her up to the witness stand with what can only be described as a heavy heart.

Danny tries not to listen to the testimony, but he hears it all just the same. It's all too easy to imagine: Montana in his mind's eye, young and giggly and surrounded by other girls with the same kind of accent and different smiles. A coincidence means that she's still alive - still with him - and as much as he wants to stare down the bastard who almost kept her dying inside and keeping him at arm's length forever, he makes sure to never look away from her pale, lovely face.

Lindsay doesn't give her testimony to the courtroom - she gives it to him, Danny Messer. It's halfway between an explanation and a hope, walking the line between _I'm sorry_ and _I love you_. When she closes her eyes for a moment and nearly breaks down, she can still feel the bond between them as an almost tangible entity: stronger, warmer, brighter than anything else in this familiar courtroom, shining and holding strong through the dark mess which almost ruined her life.

When she steps down from the stand, her legs are shaking, but she walks calmly across the floor (_heel-toe_, _heel-toe_, _heel-toe_, _please keep moving_, _do it for Kelly_) and resumes her seat. Her head hits his shoulder like a stone, and she closes her eyes and slips one hand inside his shirt to feel the steady thump-thump of his heartbeat. They don't speak while the jury deliberates, though even through closed lids she can feel the burning gazes of several pairs of curious eyes. She went to high school with some of these people, and while some of them had pitied her, others had considered her survivor status a tag of freak-by-association. She kept her head down. Had a few boyfriends. Had a few broken hearts. Studied hard, followed it up with biology and forensic science and the never ending search for 'why'.

Summa cum laude, Lindsay Monroe.

"We find the defendant -"

That man in the grey suit who almost ruined everything. Danny kisses the top of her head with near ferocity, and Lindsay squeezes her eyes still tighter shut.

"Guilty of murder in the first degree."

There's applause, and cheering, and a buzz of new life running around the courtroom like a blaze of heroin through the well oiled veins of a junkie. A ripple passes through the room as the press stream in, surrounding them, surrounding the guilty man; they're a little hushed around her, though, as if she might break. Danny takes the moment to analyse the situation, diagnose it as only a scientist can and pull her to her feet, wrapping one arm protectively round Lindsay's shoulders and leading her out through a barrage of questions.

"No comment. No comment. No comment."

"Are you Ms. Monroe's attorney?"

"Are you also a witness?"

"Hey, Lindsay - this your boyfriend?"

"Shut up, Trent," she mutters, and when he looks down as her askance she blushes and rolls her eyes. "He's my cousin...not to mention the 'ace' reporter for The Bozeman Chronicle."

The flushed young man shoves a dictaphone beneath Danny's chin, and he observes that the same shade of brown eyes runs in the family. "Can you explain the nature of your relationship to Ms. Monroe, sir? My readers - not to mention Lindsay's aunt Kathy - are dying to know."

Danny feels Lindsay laughing silently into his jacket. "Detective Danny Messer, New York crime lab," he says firmly, pushing the dictaphone away with his free hand. "Here to act as official liaison between Detective Taylor and Detective Monroe during this difficult time."

"So you aren't getting married?" Trent's eyes widen. "You'd better tell your momma that, Lindsay Ann, because when you two rolled up together she started wailing about her baby _finally_ getting married, and moving back home, and why didn't that boyfriend of Lindsay's know how to shave, he looked like such a nice young man other than that - for a New Yorker, that is."

Lindsay flicks her cousin in the nose, as she used to do when she was nine and he was eight. "No comment."

"Nicely done, Montana," Danny comments, and the media circus begins all over again.


End file.
